Saturday, October 04, 2014

Why it is a good idea to build a new supercollider

Sabine Hossenfelder has posted an entry in it's blog claiming that maybe it is not a good idea to build a new supercollider: Is the next supercollider a good investment?. I have nothing aagins Sabine, but I disagree with his arguments, and I have ansered her in her facebook. Because my answer has been long enought I have decided to copy it here in the form of a brief blog entry. I seriously disagree with your viewpoint about this. Perhaps the most important reason is that you are neglecting the dark side (matter and energy). We have overhelming evidence that the standard model is not the whole history. In fact we know that it is only an small part of the mass and energy of the universe. The fact of not knowing from direct evidence nothing about the major cinstituent of the universe means that we have very few predictive power about it. Of course we ca learn from the dark side by other type of experiments, but at the end of the day if we need detailled knowledge we need to product it in a collider (if we can). On the practical size, well, untill know the most of aplications from the standard model (the specific part that only theorethical physics study of it) come from neutrinos. That is because they can go througnt matter quite easily. Well, dark matter also can do that, but at slow speeds. If at some time we know how to product it and how to detect it in a reasonable way we could learn a lot abut solid objects, as for example, the earth, that are not available by other means. And you have also the possibility that dark matter is not simple -a single particle- and maybe you could do it for build something. Another point is the Higgs. We know that it existes, and it's mass. But we also know that itself alone is somewhat exoteric, I mean, the problem of it's raunaway mass and the naturallnes question. We had expected that something very special should existe at near the higgs mass, and we have barely beguined to explore that energies. Maybe we could say that naturalness was not a good idea, but note before studiying that range of energies in deep. And that drives me to another point. We even have not run the LHC at full energy. Maybe we could find a lot of things when it does. Even the mini black holes (and the associated braneworld scenaries)are not fully discarded at present for the next energies as far as I know. And that ,for sure, would be a great, great discover. I am almost sure that if there are mesoscopic extra dimensions and we can build miniblack holes there will be a lot of new aplied physics that will be build upon it. And about SUSY. well, it is a pain in the ass, I agree. But the fact is that it's non existance would be somewhat tantalizing. My main point about it is that local supersymmetry brings a theory of gravity, and I would find a bizarre coincidence that we have a theory of gravity and a well motivated theory of particle physics that gives gravity, and that both are unrelated. I am sure that I could elaborate a lot more on many of the subjects but I guess that anyone interested could do it by himself.

Sunday, June 29, 2014

Strings 2014

Long time since my last post. There is no particular reason, just a mix of circunstances. I write now to advise, if someone is still not aware, about the annual convention about string theory. The slides, and vídeos, are available online at talks online Based on previous experience with similar cases I warm potential watchers about the fact that the videos usually are available online for a limited amount of timpe, typically one or two weeks, so harry up!